Learning Strategies for Agile Organisations

As organisations become more agile, its learning strategies will have to keep up to keep up to operate in an agile environment. Let’s take a look at some of the characteristics of an agile organization, and what are some of the learning strategies that can be adopted to develop its people. 

Why Agile:      

First of all, perhaps the first question is address is why agile? Why do we need to change to a different way of doing things?

The reasons for agile are varied, but generally, these could include:

• Distruption caused by a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) business environment
• Digital transformation
• A greater need to work across departments an silos as networked teams
• A greater need to be flexible to respond to changes
• A greater need to improve quality and customer satisfaction 

Whatever the reasons could be, organisations are gradually adopting practices that will make it more agile.

What is an Agile Organisation?

According to McKinsey’s there are 5 trademarks of an agile organization, of which is para-phrased below:

1. Clear shared common vision and purpose
2. Network of empowered teams with clear and flat organization structures
3. Rapid decision making and learning cycles
4. Self-motivated and passionate people that supports one another
5. Evolving technology that support business and team goals 

Learning strategies, as such, would have to enable orgnaisations develop the above trademarks.

One thing to note is that learning strategies for agile organisations are different from Learning Agility from Korn Ferry.

(Source: Korn Ferry)

The 5 Learning Agilities are:

1. Mental Agility
2. People Agility
3. Change Agility
4. Results Agility
5. Self-Awareness

This is not to say that Learning Agility is bad or irrelevant to agile organsations, but applying these ideals can be challenging for many organisations 

Instead, organisations can adopt a mixture of different agile tools to make learning more flexible, effective and affordable. 

Case Study: Implementing an Agile Learning Strategy

A client in the steel welding business would like to improve their sales force effectiveness. However, while they had engaged an international acclaimed sales training company to deliver training, they felt that:

• The trainings don’t address their some of their deeper needs
• Some aspects are not addressed enough, while others have been over-emphasized

So they would like to establish a baseline of:

• What are the key competencies that the sales people need;
• What are the gaps that the sales people have

We then gather the client’s corporate competencies and then add other sales competencies onto areas that we deem as inadequate. The competencies were augmented with behavioral expectations, e.g.: 

Entrepreneurship

• remains focused on the goal and is not easily discouraged or distracted
• develops market-oriented ideas and innovations
• is able to transform ideas into realisable concepts
• thinks in opportunities, is not fixated on the past  etc.

Different competencies were allocated to different types of sales roles, namely:

1. New Business Development
2. Account Management
3. Channel Management

 A workshop is then conducted with their sales directors, HR and finance to identify:

• Which competencies are the most important; and
• Which ones have the biggest gaps

The competencies are prioiritised according to MuSCoW:

• Must
• Should
• Could and
• Won’t

One competency stood out. In the role of Channel Management, the competency on “Ability to think strategically”  战略思维能力 became a key development area. It is a competency that is voted as a “Must” by all stakeholders, and scored much lower on a scale of 1-10 by the stakeholders

 Now, this is a company-wide sales competency mapping exercise. If they were to take map this at the regional or individual level, different results will show. There are now a few options for the client:

1. Zoom in on the weakest yet most important competency and do training on that;
2. Do the mapping at the regional and individual level, then see what needs to be done to address the gaps for each individual
3. Hire the candidates that showed greater potential with their weakest and most important competency

The client chose to go with “mapping competency gaps at the team and individual level” first, but being agile they could adjust their actions when there’s a need to change. Regional managers are also empowered to make decisions on how they could address the competency gaps in their respective teams.

The entire process took 1 week of preparation, and a half-day workshop with the senior stakeholders. 

The process was not very detailed or precise, but it allowed the key stakeholders to take immediate actions. During the workshop, the stakeholders were encouraged to challenge the competencies that were being presented. While there were no disagreements with the competencies now, there could be changes for future iterations.

What’s Next for You?

Whichever tools you use to identify learning needs, be that:

• Competencies
• Performance appraisals
• Surveys, etc.

You can still use the MuSCoW technique to prioritise. 

In an age where there is increasing needs to internalize learning, ask yourself:

• What MUST be internalized and WON’t be outsourced;
• What SHOULD be outsourced;
• What COULD be outsourced; and
• What WON’T be internalized and MUST be outsourced

Also, be aware that your capabilities in L&D might improve as time goes on. Hence ask yourself:

• What are your current capabilities?;
• What could be your capabilities be in the near future?
• What should be your capabilities be in the near future?

From there, you can have your future iterations of MuSCoW for your learning roll-outs.

As an external learning solutions provider, what we can do is to help you map out how you can be agile in delivering your learning solutions. The first step in delivering learning strategies for your agile organization starts with a simple conversation.